Greek 'Twittergate' shows perils of Tspiras balancing act

ATHENS, Sept 24 (Reuters) - The resignation of a junior
Greek minister hours after his appointment has exposed Prime
Minister Alexis Tsipras to fierce criticism and highlighted the
challenge he faces to keep a fractious coalition together.

With the ink barely dry on Wednesday's cabinet appointments
by the newly re-elected prime minister, deputy infrastructure
and transport minister Dimitris Kammenos was asked to resign in
a furore over offensive postings he was alleged to have made
online.

Kammenos is a lawmaker with the right-wing Independent
Greeks party, who are junior coalition partners with Tspiras's
leftist Syriza. The two parties make uneasy bedfellows, but
Tsipras needs the Independent Greeks' 10 MPs to give the
government a slim majority of 155 seats out of 300.

The lawmaker denies the allegations of anti-Semitism and
homophobia, saying his social media accounts had been tampered
with and most of the alleged postings falsified.

The affair is an unwelcome distraction for the Tsipras as he
grapples with the tasks of meeting the terms of Greece's latest
86 billion euro ($97 billion) bailout and dealing with tens of
thousands of people arriving on Greek shores in Europe's biggest
refugee crisis since World War Two.

Tsipras, who made the appointments on the recommendation of
his coalition partner, appeared oblivious to the minister's
reputation for controversial comments -- the lawmakers was
lambasted by Jewish organisations in the summer for comparing
Greece's economic predicament to Auschwitz.

"Everyone on Twitter knew about Kammenos except Tspiras,"
the centre-right Eleftheros Typos newspaper said on its front
page on Thursday.

Tsipras eventually told his coalition partner that Kammenos
should explain himself after news of a social media storm
reached him in Brussels, where he was representing Greece at a
summit on the migrant crisis.

"It shows inattention to detail, insensitivity, especially
if they knew about it. And it shows that to err is human, but to
err twice is stupid," said political analyst Theodore
Couloumbis.

BANANA SKIN

In July Tsipras parted company with Yanis Varoufakis, the
combative academic he had appointed as finance minister, after
Varoufakis repeatedly infuriated international lenders in talks
over Greece's debt mountain.

That resignation and the subsequent bailout agreement
exposed fissures in Syriza, culminating in a split that
triggered a snap parliamentary election.

"Whether it was ignorance, or they were aware of it, it's
inconceivable to appoint such a person to the government,"
veteran leftist Panagiotis Lafazanis told Reuters, referring to
Kammenos' appointment.

"Citing ignorance is simply not justified," said Lafazanis,
who is head of the Popular Unity party that broke away from
Syriza last month.

A Syriza insider said it was all down to politics.

"There is not an issue with Tsipras's judgment...It is about
keeping a balance with your partner in government," the party
official told Reuters, declining to be named.

To illustrate the point, the official said Tsipras had
rejected another person from the Independent Greeks' list.

Couloumbis said Tsipras had made some good choices too, such
as the reappointment of Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos and
his deputy, George Chouliarakis.

"It's not fair to just talk about the banana peel he just
stepped on without mentioning the right choices," he said.